Click on photos to enlarge.
Notes in italics from Hampshire and the Isle of Wight by Nikolaus Pevsner
and David Lloyd (1967)
Yale University Press, New Haven and London.

Highclere
Castle is the largest mansion in Hampshire. It lies in a perfect park, the
work of Capability Brown during 1774-7 ( for Henry
Herbert who became Earl of Carnarvon in 1793). . ... At that
time the house in the park was a big square classical mansion built for
Henry Herbert's uncle Robert Herbert ... Of this nothing is visible
any longer, though Robert Herbert's time survives in the garden temples.
The house was remodelled and all but rebuilt by Sir Charles Barry for the
third earl in 1839-42. It is in the Elizabethan style, a style in this
elaboration still unexpected about 1840. ... (Barry
also designed the Houses of Parliament of about the same date).
Faced in Bath stone.

The
house is ashlar-faced, of three storeys with an additional storey in the
accentuated parts. They are e.g. on the entrance, i.e. N, side, apart from
the corner turrets, the three-bay centre of the eleven-bay front. The
windows are of the mullion-and-transom-cross type, with the transoms
higher up than in genuine Elizabethan houses. At the top is a strapwork
balustrade. The front is much flatter than an Elizabethan front would be.
There is in fact very little decoration - just ornamented pilasters in
stressed places.There is also the family motto 'Ung Je
Serviray' carved above all the ground floor windows.

The W
side is the office side. The S side of thirteen bays is still flatter than
the side opposite. ... The fenestration on the whole, especially on the N
and S sides, are strictly even - Georgian, that is, rather than Tudor. ...

It
is the E front where Barry went more opulent. Eleven bays arranged in an
ingenious rhythm. Here, apart from the angle turrets, there are yet
smaller turrets framing the middle five bays, themselves set in a
one-three-one pattern. These smaller turrets are windowless and have
arched niches instead. Moreover the bays between them and the angle
turrets, while they are boldly recessed from the latter, are flush with
the former. ...

Jackdaws
Castle. To the
E of the house is the Temple, a strange structure, re-erected before 1743
somehow from a site belonging to Devonshire House in Piccadilly ... Only
the Corinthian columns are said to come from Piccadilly. There are six in
the front and six at the back of the odd oblong structure, which ends in
the short sides internally in two apses. ...

The Monk's
Garden and the Secret Garden.
At the south west corner of the castle are
the remains of the church of 1689 - outline of walls and bases of
pillars.